Are you a bad enough dude?
Released in 1988 (when
Ronald Reagan
was still actually president of the United States),
Bad Dudes vs. Dragon Ninja
is a 2-D side scrolling beat 'em up in the same vein as
Final Fight
,
Kung Fu
or
Double Dragon
.
However, by the time of the NES/Famicom release Reagan was no longer President, and has been replaced accordingly with George Bush. In the game's attract mode, players see the statement: "The President has been kidnapped by ninjas. Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the president?"
Players, as protagonists Blade and Stryker (who were named unironically), can use knives and nunchaku to fight their way through levels, collecting power-ups along the way in the form of soda to refill lost life or clocks to add time.At the end of each level is a boss character.
Stage 1: The streets of a city. The boss is
Karnov
.
Stage 2: On top of a speeding "Dudes" truck. The boss is a clawed ninja named "Nenail".
Stage 3: The sewers. At this point in the Famicom version of the game, the bosses begin to threaten the player before the beginning of the stage.
The boss is a ninja named "Hanzo", a master of creating illusionary copies of himself.
Stage 4: A forest. The boss is a gigantic man named "Animal", who is decidedly un-ninja-like.
Stage 5: A train. Karnov appears again in this stage, recoloured blue in the NES/Famicom version. Amusingly, he also turns blue in the
Karnov
game when he has been hit once.
The boss is a warrior named "Killer Joe" who wields a claw on the end of a chain.
Stage 6: Caves. The boss is Kon Bousai.
Stage 7: The Dragon Ninja's HQ. All of the earlier bosses are fought a second time, with the finale being against the leader of the Dragon Ninja, coincidentally called "Dragon Ninja" himself, on a helicopter.
Bad Dudes was Data East's answer to Double Dragon and is a cult classic and everlasting source of hilarity.
Endurance Run
During the Quick Look of
DataEast Arcade Classics
, Jeff and Vinny played through the entire Bad Dudes campaign.
Log in to comment